A FRESH attempt will be made to solve Okehampton’s traffic problems early next year, after the town council urged action from the top highways boss at Devon County Council.

The county council’s highways department is to carry out a comprehensive survey of the traffic lights and other controls that affect traffic flow around the town. They are due to report back in the spring.

The move comes after the town council’s planning committee had a private meeting with the head of planning, transport-ation and the environment at Devon County Council to discuss the gridlock that regularly afflicts the town centre.

Cllr Tony Leech, chairman of the town council’s planning committee, said the traffic situation in the town had been getting ‘progressively worse’.

‘The town used to be gridlocked just at the end of the school day, but now it could be anytime of the day, and in the run up to Christmas it is pandemonium,’ he said. ‘I’ve been working on trying to get some quick wins on this situation since I was mayor back in 2007 so it has been a long long process.

‘Devon County Council is going to look at the issue to see what can be done to make the whole of the traffic situation in Okehampton better and they are going to come back to us before the spring.’

There have long been problems with gridlocking at peak times around the Waitrose and Lidl supermarket car parks, and at the junction of Mill Road with East Street. There are also problems with congestion with the new estates being built to the east of the town, exacerbated because a link road between two estates has not yet been joined up.

Cllr Leech said the town council wanted to resolve the problems before a second primary school opened next September and hundreds of new homes were occupied.

‘With all this in mind, the Okehampton Town Council’s planning committee recently arranged to have a face to face meeting with the head of planning, transportation and the environment for DCC,’ he said.

‘All the existing issues as well as future large, small and quick win proposals were put to the officer and after a very open and frank debate, it was agreed that the highways department of DCC would carry out a comprehensive survey of the existing controls that affect the traffic flows around the town to see how efficiently they are operating.

‘DCC will report back to the town council early next year when it is hoped that the report will also make recommendations on what changes can be made to allow the traffic to flow more freely around the town and the new estates to the east of Okehampton.

‘It is hoped that this initiative will at last bring some long awaited remedial action to resolve the daily traffic queues and access issues around the new estates and all before the second primary school opens.’

A link road between Exeter Road and Crediton Road, running through the two new estates had not been linked up, he said, because a parcel of land in the between the two sections of road was owned by another developer.

‘We’ve got this little bit of no man’s land which is not linked up to anywhere at the moment,’ he said. ‘We keep getting little flurries of action but Devon County Council say they can’t advance the situation without third party consent so that has created the jam on Crediton Road.’